(almost) ALL religions have declared their Invisible Sky-God the Gold Standard. It's practically required in order to have one. It's all arguments based on faith, and faith is inherently irrational. People don't ever calm down when your opening statement is "I believe that what you believe is wrong,"
even if you don't mean any harm by it (and usually people DO mean harm by it in this situation).
So there's three of these mutually-exclusive faiths in the area. Not only are they being crappy to each other now, their ancestors have been crappy to each other for thousands of years. There's more than enough well-founded dislike for each side.
I mean, this area was fought for by some of the first civilizations in recorded history. The very
idea of nationhood seems to have been developed just so people could have another reason to fight over this land. Nothing ever is going to undo this violence that's in the past, and the combination of past violence and religious differences are more than enough to be inspiring violence in the future.
I'd like to think that the religious differences could be worked out if the violence were to stop, completely. I don't think there's any hope of that happening if the violence continues from either side. Each incident is justifiable by the side that inflicts it, and fuel for hate for the other side.
Right now the extremists on both sides believe the only way their religion will survive is if they manage to destroy the other side. Maybe after a few generations without atrocities there would be less of those extremists. I wish there were a non-sci-fi way for that to happen. A
Childhood's End solution might be the only one that works, though.
And at the risk of rekindling something, a large part of the problem is that there exists this entire nation specifically created to house members of one religion/ethnic group, and that group is disliked by the majority of citizens of other groups in the area. To me, if Israel and Lebanon were the same country and it had laws like "Stop killing people who believe differently" and the people who lived in that country weren't divided into different parts based on religion/ethnicity, maybe it would be harder for people targeting one religion or another to bomb so indiscriminately.
Or to put it another way: Let's say there are the Xs and the Ys, and Organization X likes to bomb Ys and Organization Y wants to bomb Xs. As long as there are easy borders defining where the Xs and the Ys are, it's pretty easy to do large scale indiscriminate violence. Even if Organization X is killing a lot of Ys for every Organization Y member it kills the Xs can still turn a blind eye to it because they know all the dead people are Ys and there's mutual animosity. Xs might think it's horrible that, say, children died, but it wouldn't be intolerable enough to stop. But if there aren't borders defining the difference between X and Y, you know that Organization X's next attack might get a lot of Xs, and Organization Y's attack might get a lot of Ys as well. I'd like to think that the normal Xs and Ys might be willing to stop supporting their more radical Organizations if that were the case. There'd still be trouble, because, well, people are assholes to each other and there's always trouble. But ideally it would be
individual trouble. You can usually deal with individual trouble without involving explosives.*
But this isn't ever going to happen. Israel would never welcome Lebanon, and Lebanon would never welcome Israel. Both sides would see merging as defeat, losing their heritage, or whatever. More likely than not the Muslims would emigrate to surrounding "Muslim Nations" and the united country would be seen as the "new Israel" only they would have stolen even more land. Three religions would still be claiming the same land as their holy ground and would want exclusive control of it. Nothing's going to change because people are so jingoistic about Nation and Religion. Hooray, we're fucked.
The Childhood's End resolution is looking better.**
*
Whatever happened to solving problems with nice wholesome knife fights? Did "Beat It" mark the end of an era?**
Except for the whole part where humanity dies off as a species and evolves to the next stage of existence. Though, really, that might be cool too, if there are awesome parties before that happens. And cake.
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Topic: Israel/Hezbollah War in Lebanon (Read 12258 times)